Left my meeting, ready to be a member!

9th April 2016

When life gets messy, roll with it - you'll be having a ball again in no time at all!

How glad am I that I made myself go to my meeting yesterday, yes I still have loads of work to do but I feel like I can not only cope with the work but that I can stay on track at the same time.  Before leaving my house yesterday, my head was saying, oh I've got the craziest, busy week ahead of me, I'll get through that, then I'll focus on my weight loss.  Erm NO!  Instead I will have a crazy, busy week and focus on my weight loss, it takes just as much effort to overeat as it does to eat the right amount!

My lovely leader, wasn't so lovely after suggesting we only have one G&T on weeknights this week as a challenge and have a glass of water with our dinner on a night instead of the glass of wine!  She's right though, I know if I do that, I'll be less likely to have another glass, and less likely to go in the kitchen to search for snacks. Those chains of habit are generally too small to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.  But they can be broken and that's what I plan to do.   If you look at the habits you have, they're usually a series of things that happen that lead up to the wrong choices you may, so if you can break a link somewhere along that chain, you're more like to change the habit.

So me drinking more than one glass of wine, I'll get home and I'm tired, I'll grab something quick to eat for tea and a big glass of wine.  I'll sit watching something on tele, but I'm not really paying attention because I'm messing on my phone.  I'm tired, did I mention that?  Then I look up and I've eaten my tea and drunk my wine and I don't even remember doing it!  So I need another glass of wine!

What could I do? Well firstly, maybe not sit in front of the tele to eat my food.  I could have a big glass of water with my meal and save the glass of wine for after dinner.  I'm tired before I have my tea, so maybe when I have eaten, I go to bed.  Stop messing on my phone when I'm about to eat.  See how there are lots of things I could do to break that habit chain.

I used my time as a member in my meeting, to write down a few things, meals I could eat this week, what I needed to get from the shop to make them, a note to remind myself, I'm probably better off skinning and portioning the chicken in the fridge to stop me from eating the skin if I roast it.  Yeah a little bit of me time before my leader started talking and gave me a few more ideas to help me get through the week.

Did it work, well one day down, I finished well within my daily allowance (on a Friday too!) so I have all my weeklies still intact.  I drank 4 pints of water yesterday, I always start my day with a pint anyway.  I went shopping and bought the ingredients I need to make a couple of meals this weekend.  I cooked chicken chow mein for our lunch, then for dinner I made the tuna curry recipe I blogged a week or so ago and I have to say, I loved it, so simple, cheap and low in Smart Points. http://happyowls.co.uk/Recipes/RecipesDinner/TunaCurry.html  If you're not a mushroom fan, you could use chicken soup I reckon and I kept the tuna until the very end then added.  I was pleasantly surprised, it would make a great jacket potato topping too.  

My food day looked like this, I had a slice of toast for breakfast, then

I ended up having an early night because I was tired and I have a lot on this weekend, now I'm ready for day two, got Tandoori Chicken planned, hopefully the yogurt in the fridge isn't off or I'll have to make it later than planned :)

Make a plan for today BeYOUtiful, don't wing it, we all know that doesn't work, you are worth giving some attention too, we can't ever stop taking care of ourselves.

For today's Smart Poitn recipe, I've found inspiration from my members, yesterday one of them posted her dinner in my group and it got some attention. After all who doesn't like pizza! 

Here's her post & recipe (thank you Sara)

Well here it is! My 15 point low carb pizza! No bread, cauliflower base! Absolutely delicious! 12 inch diameter so totally filling too! I've loaded it with onions and mushroom and a bit of chicken too

Preheat oven to 180/160 fan or gas mark equivalent

Ingredients:

For the base : 1 head of cauliflower medium sized (don't get a huge one!) 1 egg (medium) 30g grated mozzarella 20g grated cheddar Oregano (dried) Salt/pepper pinch of each
For the filling:

Passata Oregano (dried) Cheese (I put 20g of each mozzarella and cheddar for the toppings but you could do less, this is what I did and it all works out to the 15 points.) Half chicken breast (I put a few spices on mine for taste, just grill this so it's cooked before it goes on the pizza) Ham, normal standard slice of ham cut into squares Peppers/red onion/mushrooms
Method

Cut your cauliflower florets off your cauliflower stem, and chop them in a blender so it resembles breadcrumbs. If you don't have a blender you can just as easily grate it on a normal cheese grater.

Pop it in a microwaveable dish and put it in the microwave for five mins. Then you'll need a thin tea towel to ring out all the water that's left in the cauliflower.
Once it's as dry as you can get it transfer it to a bowl, had the lightly beaten egg, cheese, salt, pepper and a teaspoon of dried oregano, mix until it's just combined
Pop it on a tray that is lined with grease proof paper (or a silicone mat if you have one) and shape it into a pizza base (you can go square or round, just make sure you round it well on the edges so it doesn't burn on the ends before the middle is cooked and also it should be quite thin based, or it will be under cooked) place it in a pre heated oven of 180/160 fan or the equivalent Gas mark for 30 minutes
After 30 mins turn it over and give it another 10 mins.
Once those ten mins are up load with all your favourite toppings and the rest of the cheese, and pop it in the oven for a final 10 minutes.
Voila! All done and you can officially say you've had a pizza!
It may seem like it takes time, but to be honest now I've done it once I would probably buy a huge cauliflower, do right up to putting it on the grease proof paper and then freeze it so you have a readymade base for whenever you fancy it!